Remember last night when I said Jon Stewart was dropping the S-word without it being bleeped?
Well, you can see it here, Chaos on Bullsh%$ Mountain:
Truth be told, this is the most polemic I’ve ever seen him, but that’s got to leave a mark!
Category: Politics
Nice Try Scotty
Looks like little Scotty Brown was trying to avoid his first debate with Elizabeth Warren, using an upcoming Senate vote as an excuse.
Well, Harry Reid felt your pain:
Majority Leader Harry Reid abruptly scrapped votes in the Senate on Thursday so Sen. Scott Brown could participate in a high-profile debate with Elizabeth Warren in Boston.
“No more votes today,” Reid (D-Nev.) said on the floor. “It’s obvious to me what’s going on. I’ve been to a few of these rodeos. It is obvious there is a big stall taking place. One of the senators who doesn’t want to debate tonight won’t be in a debate. While he can’t use the Senate as an excuse, there will be no more votes today.”
Well played, Senator Reid.
It’s streaming on WBZ and on CSPAN-3.
In the first few minutes, Scotty is harping on her family history (the whole “part Cherokee and Delaware” thing).
He is coming across a really, really pissy.
He’s sputtering.
Chicago Teachers’ Strike Over
Technically, the strike is just suspended, but I can’t see the teachers hitting the line again:
The Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates decided this afternoon to end the city’s first teacher strike in 25 years and return more than 350,000 students to the classroom Wednesday.
The voice vote was taken after some 800 delegates convened at a union meeting hall near Chinatown to discuss and debate a tentative contract. Union leaders had already signed off on the agreement with Chicago Public Schools.
“We said we couldn’t solve all the problems. . .and it was time to suspend the strike,” CTU President Karen Lewis said at a news conference after the vote.
One hopes that Rahm gets taken down at the next election.
To the degree than anyone lost, it was Emanuel, and here’s hoping that he gets taken down at the next election.
He’s a f%$#ing bully who never seems to muster the guts to use it on the other side, and he’s yet another case of an incompetence failing up.
He’s Dick Cheney minus one finger tip.
Interesting Labor Law Ruling in Wisconsin
It overturned Scott Walker’s revocation of collective bargaining rights.
He declared that it violated the home rule provisions of the Wisconsin state constitution, as well as the 1st amendment.
I don’t expect this to stand on appeal, but I’m an engineer, not a lawyer.
Rahm, Switch Parties
So Rahm’s vision for education in Chicago is to break the unions and turn the schools over to his rich campaign contributors, and it’s gotten Randroid Paul Ryan positively giddy:
Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan has twisted the knife just a bit more in an attempt to draw out President Obama on the Chicago Teachers Union strike, now entering its second day. He told a fundraiser in Portland, OR yesterday that he endorsed the position in the strike of the former chief of staff of Barack Obama:………
I think the most important by-product of this strike is that it will show how deeply embedded the Students First/Waiting for Superman frame has become, in the traditional media, in the cultural firmament among elites, and in the Democratic Party. I’ve heard people on social media wondering what this strike is about. Narrowly speaking, Chicago teachers aren’t supposed to be able to strike over anything but pay and benefits. And certainly, they’re trying to retain their health care. But it’s not that hard to see what this is about. Significant sections of the Chicago Public Schools system are starved for funds. They are putting 40-50 students in classrooms without air conditioning. The kids don’t have books or materials weeks into the term. And ultimately, the goal is to make those schools so poorly maintained, staffed and administered that they “fail,” allowing Rahm Emanuel and his hedge fund buddies to essentially privatize them: ………
Seriously, all this guy has is his ability to suck up to rich people.
I have no clue as to why he is a Democrat.
As to what Obama will do, I expect crickets as a best outcome.
Moron
With the new districts in Maryland, the 1stdistrict is pretty much a Republican lock.
The benefit is that it makes the 6th a district a lot more competitive.
So I understand that you might select a non-entity who has put in their dues as a sacrificial lamb.
However, when your candidate has committed felony voter fraud, you have not done even the minimal due diligence required:
Wendy Rosen, the Democratic challenger to Republican Rep. Andy Harris in the 1st Congressional District, withdrew from the race Monday amid allegations that she voted in elections in both Maryland and Florida in 2006 and 2008.
It was unclear, however, whether she could remove her name from the ballot with the election less than two months away. Under state law, a candidate has until 70 days before an election to remove his or her name from the ballot. The deadline for the Nov. 6 election passed on Aug. 28.
Democratic leaders — who raised the allegations, urged Rosen to step aside and notified prosecutors — said they would gather Central Committee members this month to identify a write-in candidate for the district, which includes the Eastern Shore and parts of Harford, Carroll, Cecil and Baltimore counties.
Republicans, meanwhile, said the allegations prove that voter fraud is real and called on Democrats to join the GOP in calling for reforms.
Rosen, 57, a Cockeysville businesswoman and Maryland voter, told The Baltimore Sun that she registered to vote in Florida several years ago in order to support a “very close friend” running for the St. Petersburg City Council and to vote on local issues there.
Rosen said she was able to register in Florida because she owned property there.
Under Maryland law, a voter here may not maintain registration in a second state if it allows the voter to participate in state or federal elections there, according to Jared DeMaris, director of candidacy and campaign finance at the State Board of Elections.
State Democratic Chairwoman Yvette Lewis said an examination of voting records in Maryland and Florida showed that Rosen participated in the 2006 general election and the 2008 primaries in both states.
Unfortunately, it’s too late to get another name on the ballot.
Someone needs to get fired over this.
Note also that this is precisely the sort of voter fraud that the various Republican “Papers Please” voter suppression laws will not effect.
I Love British Nastiness
When the BBC game show Have I Got News for You had a politician ditch them for the 3rd time, they replaced him with a tub of lard.
H/t Paul Krugment.
On Clint Eastwood’s Speech
I cannot wait to see how Stewart and Colbert address this.
Here are some pictures for your edification, swiped from the Stellar Parthenon BBS:
I really don’t have anything else to add.
Too Good Not to Share
FWIW, I am following the Republican Convention only so far as I can by listening to Stewart and Colbert and following political cartoons.
H/t Neophyte at SP for the pic.
The Story Behind the Story
OK, one of the inevitable cliches of modern Presidential campaign coverage is the veepstakes, followed by the post mortem of this decisions.
Well, this article has a deeply interesting back-story:
Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t willing to give up the New Jersey statehouse to be Mitt Romney’s running mate because he doubted they’d win, The Post has learned.
Romney’s top aides had demanded Christie step down as the state’s chief executive because if he didn’t, strict pay-to-play laws would have restricted the nation’s largest banks from donating to the campaign — since those banks do business with New Jersey.
But Christie adamantly refused to sacrifice his post, believing that being Romney’s running mate wasn’t worth the gamble.
“[Christie] felt, at one point, that [President] Obama could lose this. And, look, there still is that chance. But he knows, right now, you have to say it’s unlikely,” one source said.
The tough-talking governor believed Romney severely damaged his campaign by releasing only limited tax returns and committing several gaffes during his international tour in July.
Certain Romney was doomed, Christie stuck to his guns — even as some of his own aides pushed him to run, another source said.
OK, why is this story different from all the other useless veepstake gossip?
It isn’t the pay to play rules, which are straightforward: If a governor is running, the big banks pretty would have to choose between contributing to Mitt, or doing pension business with New Jersey.
The big story is that this article was published in the The New York Post.
That’s right, it was published in Rupert Murdoch’s house organ (there is the Wall Street Journal, but they have to preserve the illusion of credibility in non-business news).
I’ve racked my brain, and I can come up with only two reasons for Murdoch allowing a story like this to be published:
- He is convinced that Romney is going to lose.
- He has Barack Obama’s genitals in his back pocket.
It could be both.
Basically, when you look at Murdoch’s media empire, much of it depends on regulatory arbitrage, allowing him to form defacto monopolies, and skirt media cross ownership rules.
It’s why his continued ownership of dead tree newspapers make sense: To a much greater degree than the broadcast medium, they can engage in long form journalism that sets the tone for a campaign, and so politicians curry favor with him.
The papers may not generate profits, but they allow him to curry favor with politicians and regulators, which in turn make the size and scope of his broadcast and satellite operations possible.
H/t Cthulhu at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Pass the Popcorn…
Gawker has acquired a cache of nearly 1000 internal documents detailing activities at Bain Capital, and they appear to show some fairly arcane tax avoidance schemes used by Rmoney to hide income from the IRS:
Mitt Romney’s $250 million fortune is largely a black hole: Aside from the meager and vague disclosures he has filed under federal and Massachusetts laws, and the two years of partial tax returns (one filed and another provisional) he has released, there is almost no data on precisely what his vast holdings consist of, or what vehicles he has used to escape taxes on his income. Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that he has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade.
Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher). Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama’s fiscal approach and his money managers’ embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren’t made until years after he left the company.
H/t Americablog, and the documents can be examined here.
It also appears that it’s getting coverage in the main stream old media (ABC) as well.
Heh.
I’m Impressed
Egypt’s President Mohamed Mursi has issued a decree ordering that journalists who have been detained under Egypts media laws must be released:
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi issued a decree barring the detention of journalists awaiting trial, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported, citing presidential spokesman Yasser Ali.
In response to Mursi’s action yesterday, Egypt’s public prosecutor ordered the release of Islam Afifi, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Al-Dostour, MENA reported, citing Deputy Prosecutor General Adel el-Saeed. He was freed late yesterday, the Associated Press reported.
Egyptian journalists and rights groups have described the prosecution of Afifi, whose newspaper has been critical of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a benchmark of press freedom under Mursi and the most aggressive action by Islamists against what they portray as biased media coverage.
This was not something that I would have expected, but my guess is that he he is much more forward looking in his views of free speech and society than the generals we have been backing all these years.
But I think that we will still see a full court press from the usual suspects at the Council for Foreign Relations screaming “Islamist”.
God Bless The Onion
I Misspoke—What I Meant To Say Is ‘I Am Dumb As Dog Sh%$ And I Am A Terrible Human Being’
By Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) August 20, 2012
As a politician, I often find myself in situations where, unfortunately, I express a certain thought or idea poorly, or find my words taken out of context. Indeed, that is what happened this weekend. Upon reviewing the impromptu remarks I made Sunday afternoon, I can now see that I used the wrong words in the wrong way. I would now like to set the record straight with the American people and clear up some confusion about what it was I intended to convey.
You see, what I said was, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” But what I meant to say was, “I am a worthless, moronic sack of sh%$ and an utterly irredeemable human being who needs to shut up and go away forever.”
(%$ mine)
They owe me a screen cleaner.
Deep Thought
H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Tweet of the Day
Once again, Michael Moore
Mitt Picks a Running Mate
So, Mitt Rmoney has picked Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running.
Only in America could be someone who idolizes a virulently anti-religious atheist with the sexual morals of a rabid mink in heat could be considered the savior of the Republicans, and conservative politics.
Of sourse, it is America, so Paul Ryan, who is such a fan of hack writer Ayn Rand that he requires his staff to read every page of Atlas Shrugged.
He’s also the guy who put forward a budget that eliminated Medicare, which led to some very surprising losses in special elections for the GOP.
I can’t imagine that Willard needs to appease the party’s right-wing base this badly, so I gotta figure that this is a ploy to get Obama to stop talking about his tax returns, or lack thereof.
If you don’t know who Paul Ryan is, I would refer you to Charlie Pierce on what a contemptible piece or work he is.
BTW, Michael Moore had the tweet of the day:
Link
This might be unfair to Charles Manson.
What a Surprise, The Vampire Squid Skates
What a surprise, Goldman Sachs gets to defraud its customers in and lie to Congress about the Abacus deal, where they sold bad loans to investors, and then bet against them, and there is no prosecution:
Neither Goldman Sachs Group Inc nor its employees will face U.S. criminal charges related to trades they made during the financial crisis that were highlighted in a 2011 U.S. Senate report, the Justice Department said on Thursday.
The unusual announcement not to prosecute criminally came in an unsigned statement attributed to the department.
Few expected the bank to face criminal charges, but in April 2011, U.S. Senator Carl Levin asked for a criminal investigation after the subcommittee he leads spent years looking into Goldman.
Levin’s subcommittee held televised hearings as part of its inquiry, which centered on a subprime mortgage product known as Abacus. He said Goldman misled Congress and investors.
Goldman employee Fabrice Tourre still faces a civil complaint from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He has denied any wrongdoing and was the only person accused.
Goldman itself settled with the SEC for $550 million in July 2010 without admitting wrongdoing.
(emphasis mine)
Why am I not surprised?
Dualing Quotes of the Day
It’s a tough choice, reader(s), which do you prefer:
Why David Cameron is the ultimate “seagull” managerHe flies in, makes a lot of noise, dumps on everyone from a great height, and then flies out again.
Or this one:
Romney finally gets a supporter who changes positions as often as he does.Thomas Myer, on the news that pr0n star Jenna Jameson has endorsed his candidacy.
It’s a tough call.
What Might Be the Most Important Story You Have Not Heard About the Oak Creek Massacre
Yes, the events in Oak Creek are a tragedy, but this was not the only act of right wing bigoted domestic terrorism in recent months, it wasn’t even the only act of right wing bigoted domestic terrorism this weekend.
Some Klan wannabee firebombed a Mosque in Joplin Missouri.
These are not isolated incidents. Rather this is a part of a deliberate effort to create an environment that encourages people with a few screws loose to engage in acts of terrorism.
The assassination of George Tiller is another part of this trend.
Fabulous!!!
The Democratic Party has decided to place a marriage equality plank in the party platform:
The Democratic Party platform drafting committee approved on Sunday language endorsing same-sex marriage in addition to other pro-LGBT positions as part of the Democratic Party platform, according to two sources familiar with the drafting process.
Retiring gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who sits on the committee, told the Washington Blade on Monday that the 15-member panel unanimously backed the inclusion of a marriage equality plank after a national hearing over the weekend in Minneapolis, in which several witnesses testified in favor of such language.
“I was part of a unanimous decision to include it,” Frank said. “There was a unanimous decision in the drafting committee to include it in the platform, which I supported, but everybody was for it.”
Frank emphasized that support for marriage equality is a position that has been established for the Democratic Party, from the president, who endorsed marriage equality in May, to House Democratic lawmakers who voted to reject an amendment reaffirming the Defense of Marriage Act earlier this month.
There is a lesson to be learned here, if you relentlessly hound Barack Obama, protest his fund raisers, confront his contributors, and organize a donation boycott, then he will EVENTUALLY he’ll do the right thing.